Web standards revisited

A List Apart has an interesting post about called Web Standards 2008: Three Circles of Hell. Molly E. Holzschlag gives an interesting view into the web standards organizations and the mechanisms that drive web standards. This is not uplifting reading at all despite the optimistic note towards the end:

Can we solve the problem? I’ve never been a fortune teller, but I am an optimist. I believe we have amazing people in each of these circles who can come together and make things happen.

I am more of a pessimist so I would place my money on a future with bad standards. Still - bad standards are better than no standards at all. After all - it is easier to be a web developer these days than it used to be. I like to think that this is because more and better standards. The tools are better and the number of things that don't work in Internet Explorer are not that numerous any more. Pragmatically speaking - there is progress. Could standards be better - definitely. I spent almost a day last week explaining the XML Schema standard (oops - it is not a standard - it is a recommendation....) to a group of people attending an XML course for beginners. They asked me: "Why is it so complicated?". I had no answer to that. (For those lucky few of you that aren't XML-enabled it is easy to summarize the complexity. To define

<foo> 
    <bar/> 
</foo>

you need to say

<element name="foo"> 
    <complexType> 
        <sequence> 
            <element name="bar" type="string"/> 
        </sequence> 
    </complexType> 
</element>

With some imagination it is not hard to see where this is leading....) My teacher colleague Mathias Franzén pointed out that things may be unnecessarily complex but once embraced by the critical mass there is no turning back. XML Schema is like that. It has become the de facto standard for all large organizations. Sad - since there is this nice alternative called RELAX NG that has the same functionality without the unnecessary complexity. 

Anyway - back to the article. The 3 circles of hell are (1) standards organizations with W3C playing the lead part, (2) independent organizations like WHATWG  and finally (3) corporations. They all drive standards in their different ways and all have pros and cons that are nicely listed in the article. A glimmer of hope in the darkness is the newly initiated World Wide Web Foundation founded by Tim Berners-Lee (whom we all respect). This foundation will "advance one web that is free and open", "expand the web's capability and robustness" and finally "extend the web's benefit to all people on the planet". One first guess is that W3C might as well stand behind this kind of statements. What makes this different is the aim for an economic model where the standards organization is not economically dependent on the good will of big corporations - with their own evil agendas - but has independent funding. Hmmm - the money must come from somewhere must it not? 

Do I love it or hate it?

For a couple of weeks now I am a proud owner of a 17'' MacBook Pro (2.5 GHz Intel core 2 Duo, 4GB RAM). I thought it is time to air some first impressions. This is of course not a thorough review, but rather some random observations. I would be intrigued if others share my experiences.

Let's starts some cons. What is the deal with the lid lock? It feels really flimsy when closed and while I know that I have stubby fingers I am almost sure that other people must have problems as well pressing the button to open the lid. I know things have to look shiny, but surely that lock could be done better without compromising the unique Mac design. Once open and up and running there is not much to complain about. One thing I cannot figure out though. Maybe it is a relict from my not so distant PC times, but what is the deal with the Command key? Fair enough that in most Mac application the Control key is replaced by the Command key. I guess I could get used to it, but for heaven's sake be consistent. Once you are working with a bash it's suddenly the Control key again. My guess is Apple just did not dare to replace the Control key with the Command key in the bash. Just imagine the outcry from all the shell power users. For my part the Control key could just have been removed. Well, maybe I haven't thought this completely though yet, but so far I wish it would be true since it confuses still the heck out of me. Another con in my eyes is the locations of some configuration files and the departing of the classical directory layout in Mac OS X. Given its Unix root is just seems wrong to me. In some cases this might be understandable, but why is my home directory under /Users/hardy instead of /home/hardy, especially since /home seems still to exists?

But enough cons. There are a lot of pros and overall I am more than happy with my new machine. Especially nice is that Mac OS X boots so fast and that the sleep mode actually works. It is the first time I own a computer where the sleep mode is working the way I expect it to work. Just have as many progams as you want running, enter sleep mode, reopen the computer and off you go again. Sweet. I am also impressed by the Look&Feel of many of the build in Mac apps. It is just a pleasure to work with them. And yes, in many cases it is just gloss, but that's what you pay for, isn't  it? The dock is also one of these things which are just great. I love it. Small little details, like the blue dot indicating that the program is actually running. And the way icons expands when you hover over them. Just sweet. Battery life so far is ok, even though I've heard storries about rapidly degrading battery life. Fingers crossed that this is not happening to me any time soon. Overall performance is great and so far I had none of this annoying "why is the system so slow now?" moments.

And last, but definitely not least - it's just soooo slick.

Bottom line - I love it :)

--Hardy